Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Russia Faces Something Worse than Disintegration, Oreshkin Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, January 27 – Russia faces
something even worse than disintegration, a long period in which the regions
ignore Moscow because Moscow has insufficient funds to ensure their loyalty lest
they lose all chance of getting money in the future and in which Moscow ignores
how them are ignoring the center lest it provoke secession, Dmitry Oreshkin
says.

That
is a truly unstable and unpredictable situation, one that could be described
although Oreshkin doesn’t use this term, as a failed state, a place where lots
of institutions have power but where there is no single controlling center able
to ensure consistency across its territory. Such states are especially
dangerous as they may seek to resolve their problems via aggression abroad.

Such states may continue to exist with the same borders but their politics will be fundamentally altered, with the center and the periphery living in very different realities and with the risk that one or the other could miscalculate and send the country into a death spiral all too real.

The
reasons many are talking about the possibility of the disintegration of the
Russian Federation is the economic crisis, Orseshkin says, because “in Russia,
any economic crisis always acquires a geographic dimension,” given the extreme
centralization of the Russian economy.

Moscow
collects the money and sends part of it back to the regions, but at present,
there are “fewer than ten donor regions” and “a minimum of 76” who rely on
federal subsidies.If the center runs
out of money, the leaders of the latter face “stress” from two directions given
that the center has imposed unfunded liabilities and that local elites can’t
raise enough money locally.

Such
officials invariably explain their problems in the following way: “Moscow isn’t
giving” what it should. “Such appeals very well confirm the thesis that the
crisis is acquiring a geographic dimension” given that “Moscow is guilty of
everything.” But they can’t break with Moscow lest they not get any funds in the
future.

In
the Russian Federation now as in the Soviet Union at the end, “the most
depressed regions are the last to begin to accuse Moscow because they are most
depend on subsidies from it.” But those who most actively sought to escape from
the USSR were precisely those like the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians who
were relatively better off.

Those
who are better off now are those which can produce more oil and gas or sell
more agricultural goods or are the site of defense industry, Oreshkin says; but
those are precisely the ones who are dependent on Moscow in other ways in order
to get money for what they extract or build.

Chechnya is a major recipient of federal aid, but
the situation is complicated by the fact that Kadyrov “has in fact created a
sovereign state in which there is its own law and economy, even though it is
subsidized.” But Moscow “doesn’t actually control it.”The center provides money but “Kadyrov spends
it as he likes.” In such a situation, he isn’t ready to try to secede.

As for other regions, their leaders
will try to get what they can and Moscow will increasingly recognize that it
has lost control over exactly what they do with the subsidies.Calling for secession is political death, but
ignoring Moscow is increasingly possible – and hence the common legal space
Putin promoted earlier will disappear.

Instead, the regional elites will
use whatever money they do get as they like, “and the Kremlin will look through
its fingers at their activity in the region.” All will be as satisfied as they
can be with limited resources, but the Russian Federation will increasingly
look like anything but a unified state.